Better Cannae?

[Fluidwill]

Just played one of my regular opps at Cannae mirrored and we're having a bit of a mutter about the scen, specifically the Romans, even at below average across the board, seem to be a bit OP. Presumably some of this highlights just how brilliant Hannibal was but has anyone made an improved Cannae for MP? A quick scan of the user scens in game suggests not but I thought I'd ask. Thanks.

[deeter]

Never even bothered with Cannae as Hannibal's victory has never successfully been replicated in any wargame I know of. (Ditto for Austerlitz and many others) No player is as lame as the Romans were that day. Even FOG Trebbia is nearly impossible to win as Carthage. I've never seen it happen, only read one report. Maybe this points to an essential flaw in the game? You might try Trebbia. At least a victory by Carthage is almost doable.

Deeter

[GiveWarAchance]

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[Fluidwill]

"veteran gamers who probably have tactical skills far exceeding the average general"


Probably....

Thanks guys, I'll suggest Trebbia for the next one.

[deeter]

Good luck with Trebbia. I would interested to know if Carthage wins -- a rare or impossible feat.

Deeter

[Ray552]

Never even bothered with Cannae as Hannibal's victory has never successfully been replicated in any wargame I know of. (Ditto for Austerlitz and many others.) No player is as lame as the Romans were that day. Even FOG Trebbia is nearly impossible to win as Carthage. I've never seen it happen, only read one report. Maybe this points to an essential flaw in the game? You might try Trebbia. At least a victory by Carthage is almost doable.

Deeter

Hannibal, as brilliant as he was, still needed Sempronius (at Trebia) and Varro (at Cannae) in command of the Romans to pull off these spectacular victories.

So not a flaw in the game - I think the only way to replicate the incompetence of the Roman generals is to make the Roman player wear a blindfold and drink a few shots of high-proof liquor beforehand...

[Edit] I forgot Hannibal also ambushed Flaminius at Lake Trasimene - so there's another drunken game one can play.

[deeter]

I strongly encourage all my opponents to follow ray's advice. Still, Roman infantry are hard to beat (in the stock form) even if their commander is drunk. In the Trebbia scenario, they are chilled which incurs a minor debuff but still superior, but that doesn't reflect well how bad their condition was. I would like to see Romans brought down a notch, at least against Carthage.

Deeter

[Nijis]

I think scenarios representing upset victories like Cannae are best designed for singleplayer against the AI. Otherwise they'd need scripted automated orders that force the Romans to blunder forward, which wouldn't be much fun.

[SnuggleBunnies]

I have won Cannae as the Carthaginians in MP, but of course my opponent wasn't going to obligingly play the Romans historically. I think this sort of scenario really needs some sort of command limitation system (like in Great Battles of History) to work, and that's never been part of the fog system.

[Geffalrus]

Honestly, Cannae will always be boring because either the player re-enacts Hannibal’s exact plan, or Roman numbers roflstomp Hannibal into paste. There’s not a lot of player input. Perhaps a more interesting option would be to keep the army unit selection (Roman advantage), but randomize the map. So now the players have to make new tactics in new situations to achieve victory. A sort of “What if Cannae wasn’t the battle location?”

Good scenarios give the player a challenging puzzle to overcome. I don’t necessarily think the Cannae challenge of: “can Carthaginian cavalry superiority win fast enough?” is sufficient. It’s okay vs the AI, but clearly not MP. Which is fine. Maybe the MP version needs special tweaking.

FWIW, Carthage vs Diadochi matches often feel very authentically Cannae because pikes are expensive, powerful, and expensive, replicating the center bulldozer. Meanwhile, the flanks are strapped for cash while the Carthaginians can bring a cavalry swarm. So very quickly you can get a situation where the Diadochi player is racing the clock to punch out the center, while the Carthage player races around the flanks to save the embattled center.

[deeter]

Some famous battles just can't be replicated when surprise is a big element. Aursterlitz and Cannae are prime examples. Napoleon tricked the allies into denuding their center while Hannibal tricked the Romans into bunching up -- things no human opponent would do given hindsight.

I completely agree with Snugglebunnie's reference to GBoH command rules and wish something like this was part of FOG. It would really limit random unit movements, the choice often being "do I use my command points to move a whole line of troops or just a few into special positions?"

[Geffalrus]

If memory serves, what some modified scenarios in Pike and Shot handle this through scripts that force AI control over select units at the start of the battle to replicate intentional stupid moves, while allowing player control over other units to respond better than what happened in the past.

After checking out the Cannae scenario unit numbers again, it just seems like the Roman player can so easily spread wide, or go deep and protect their flanks, that the Carthaginian cavalry advantage becomes largely meaningless. Maybe a better handling of the Roman center would be to create custom Roman infantry units that have 4 ranks like pikes, instead of the traditional 2, and would be unmaneuverable. Super Deep Impact Foot with Roman morale and armor, essentially. That would prevent the Roman infantry from easily protecting their flanks as previously described, while also giving them some pushing power since they would have their armor + morale + no unit size penalty when facing warbands. As a result, perhaps the Roman player would be balancing desperate cavalry tactics on the flanks while furiously attacking in the center to overrun Hannibal's infantry ASAP. The Carthaginian player would be doing the inverse, rushing against the clock to destroy Roman cavalry before the Roman "Impact Phalanx" overwhelmed the thinner Carthaginian infantry line.

That's my suggestion, and one that might balance the scenario for MP a little bit.

[fogman]

The issue is that everyone assumes that the scenario must start at the beginning, with two lines of troops facing another, and lots of ground between them. I never see it that way. Most famous battles have very particular circumstances that, in keeping with their historicity, need to be set up at a different time when that special circumstance has already occurred, or in such a way that makes it very likely, cut to the chase set-up as I like to call it. Any other way and you may as well play a custom battle with the relevant army lists. An imperfect analogy: one can start a scenario (or campaign as it would be called) of the eastern front on June 22 1941, but it is as interesting to start it before Fall Blau or Uranus in 1942, or Zitadelle in 1943, or Bagration in 1944. If one looks at battles as a continuum of possibilities, then any entry point can provide a ludic challenge, and that holds even for tactical scales. Scenarios have to be crafted out of circumstances to appreciate their historical context, and I never bought the argument that in such cases, ‘there is nothing to do’. The worst scenarios I played in Squad Leader, my first true wargame that shaped my design language, were ‘encounter’ types, instead of the ones where contact has already been made. In short, of course Cannae cannot be Cannae in the game, that shouldn’t be surprising at all. That’s no fault of the system, or even of the game designer but the expectation of most gamers who would rather enjoy ‘freedom’ of maneuver than historical processes.

[Ray552]

...Maybe a better handling of the Roman center would be to create custom Roman infantry units that have 4 ranks like pikes, instead of the traditional 2, and would be unmaneuverable. Super Deep Impact Foot with Roman morale and armor, essentially. That would prevent the Roman infantry from easily protecting their flanks as previously described, while also giving them some pushing power since they would have their armor + morale + no unit size penalty when facing warbands. As a result, perhaps the Roman player would be balancing desperate cavalry tactics on the flanks while furiously attacking in the center to overrun Hannibal's infantry ASAP. The Carthaginian player would be doing the inverse, rushing against the clock to destroy Roman cavalry before the Roman "Impact Phalanx" overwhelmed the thinner Carthaginian infantry line.

That's my suggestion, and one that might balance the scenario for MP a little bit.

Excellent! "Impact Phalanx"

[deeter]

In Fog, the Roman player will just send triarii out into an anti cavalry cordon and shut that down.

[Karvon]

In Fog, the Roman player will just send triarii out into an anti cavalry cordon and shut that down.

Yeah, that's a very common and effective use of the triarii which isn't really a historical employment of them. They were tasked with forming up a final infantry reserve line on which the rest of the army could rally, not strung out on the flanks.

I reduced the ease of doing this in my remake of Trebia by concentrating the triarii initially in the center, rather than leaving them loosely spread out along the back of the Roman deployment area.

[deeter]

You can do the same with hastati too.

Deeter

[Geffalrus]

If Triarii were so effective at stopping cavalry, one wonders how the Romans would ever have been defeated by flank attacks; at Cannae or anywhere else. My own hunch is that the zoc control of infantry units is too effective vs cavalry. I’m not sure - what - it should be like, but the ability of infantry to zone out large areas vs cavalry does limit the ability of cavalry to flank attack.

[deeter]

It's about being able to send units at will rather than them being part of a larger formation. If the game let's you do it, people will do it regardless of history. That's why it's so hard playing as Hannibal, I guess.

Deeter

[melm]

Lol. That's because the game player plays like a God, who can coordinate all the action from the far left to the right with crispy clear order. It's sad that Roman generals don't have such advantage, especially with a very large army. This can only be improved if the command link and command latency is introduced into the game.